


A Love Like In Stories

by hobbitdragon



Series: Witcher Fics [6]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Death Threats, Dissociation, Feelings Realization, Hopeful Ending, I shook a witcher and intergenerational trauma fell out, Love Confessions, M/M, Manipulation, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Trauma, and then in the second half of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: Just before their Trial of the Grasses, one of Kaer Morhen's mages takes advantage of Geralt and Eskel's budding interest in each other. Many decades later, Eskel tries again to see if there could be anything between them.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Witcher Fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731811
Comments: 52
Kudos: 72
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	1. Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrashyTime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashyTime/gifts).



> Thanks to BrightEyedJill for beta-reading and encouraging me when I got stuck writing this!
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS: I have marked this fic with the archive warnings for "Rape/Non-con" and "Underage Content", and I really, really mean it. Geralt and Eskel are ten years old in this story when they are sexually abused, and the abuse happens onscreen and is graphically described. In addition to the CSA, there are repeated mentions of other forms of canon-typical child abuse, including physical abuse. Proceed with caution.

That week, Geralt had been crowing to Eskel about how much bigger his cock was than before, and how he was growing his very first real hairs above his cock. A few reddish, wiry, long ones had at last appeared among the fine peachfuzz, accompanied by a few under his arms as well.

Eskel had, of course, demanded to see them, not believing Geralt’s claims. So, naturally, Geralt had unbuttoned his breeches to show off. 

They had seen one another naked hundreds of times, but there had been something different that time. Something in the way Eskel stared between Geralt’s legs a little too long, and then laughed and smiled a little too sharply. 

“How do they feel?” he’d asked, and lifted one hand as though to touch before catching himself and shoving both fists into his pockets. 

“Weird,” Geralt had replied, stroking over the little cluster of hairs and looking at Eskel. “They’re not soft like the hair on my head. Not quite. Almost more like a horse’s mane.”

They both knew without saying it that at ten years old, with those hairs coming in, they were past due for the Trial of the Grasses. It was the right season for it, so it would probably happen any week now. 

As Geralt stood there, britches around his thighs and looking at Eskel looking at him, Geralt thought:  _ I wonder what it would be like to kiss a boy. Is it different kissing boys than it is kissing girls? Does it work the same?  _

When his prick stirred against his fingertips, he yanked his clothes back into place, buttoning them smartly. Eskel wouldn’t want to see that. 

The next day one of the mages, a tall thin man named Cavendro who only visited the keep in the summers to administer the Trials, narrowed his eyes at the two young trainees. At the end of lunch he beckoned them away from the others. 

Eskel gave Geralt an anxious look. The mages rarely had anything to do with the boys except during the Trials themselves, so whatever Cavendro wanted was unprecedented and thus probably cause for alarm. Stranger still, when they followed Cavendro he took them to the mages’ private lab, the one not even trainers like Vesemir were allowed into: the one where they made the mutagens. Were they going to be put through the Trial of the Grasses right now, today, by themselves?

When they entered the lab, Geralt stared around at the tables and tables of curved glass and rosy copper and burners. Everywhere he looked he saw racks of herbs and jars of monster specimens and the tools for making use of both, but he saw none of the iron cage-tables that were used for the Trials. So Geralt relaxed again, a little. 

Cavendro seated himself at a desk along one side of the room. The mage’s eyes trailed over their bodies, slow and serious, so that Geralt’s shoulders curled and he became keenly aware of his red eyebrows and eyelashes. His hair was much browner, and everyone said that he looked strange with such gingery lashes and brows, so that was probably just what the mage was thinking. 

Eskel, meanwhile, prided himself on being taller than most of their peers, but even he suddenly seemed very small beside this lanky, imposing mage. Though Cavendro was now seated, his long limbs sprawled out at what seemed like impossible lengths. He was taller than even most of the adult Witchers. 

“You two are inseparable,” Cavendro said slowly. “I can see it in your minds. It is a wonder that they haven’t beaten it out of you yet.”

“Yes, sir?” Geralt agreed, uncertain how to respond to this. “We’re best friends. We’ve known each other since Eskel arrived at the age of four. Vesemir says we liked each other right away.”

This got a warm smile out of Cavendro. It changed the craggy lines of his face into something almost handsome. One of his long, bony hands dropped into his lap where the fingers spread and pressed like a spider--like one of the huge arachas they would be called upon to slay someday. 

“Little wolf pups in love, how perfect,” Cavendro crooned. 

Geralt’s face flamed hot in mortification and he ducked his chin. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Eskel looking back and forth between the mage and Geralt. 

“That’s not--it’s not like that,” Geralt protested feebly. And it wasn’t! Some of the older boys fucked each other, of course, boys could do that together, but that was just fucking. It had always been a foregone conclusion that Geralt and Eskel would do that together someday soon. When they were ready. But two men couldn’t love each other--surely they couldn’t? Someone would have told Geralt if they could. Someone would have written about it in a book. 

“It isn’t?” Eskel asked, and something vulnerable in his voice made Gerat’s face burn hotter still. “I thought--nevermind.”

“Oh this is too good,” Cavendro purred. His eyes fell on Geralt again, fixing on Geralt’s awful eyebrows that were the same color as the copper stills. “Don’t lie to me, puppy. You know what you feel, even if you don’t think you’re allowed to call it that.”

Hands gripping into fists at his side, Geralt held his breath. He wanted to sink through the floor. He wanted to look at Eskel, but he was too scared. What if Eskel was disappointed or angry or hurt or disgusted? What if this ruined everything? 

But then Eskel’s familiar hand landed on Geralt’s forearm and squeezed. Geralt’s face felt as if it were weighted with lead, but he managed to drag his chin up and risk a single glance at Eskel. 

“It’s fine, Geralt,” Eskel whispered. “It is.”

For a long, silent moment, Geralt forgot that they were in the mages’ secret lab, that Cavendro was there looking at them, and that Geralt himself had awful eyebrows that everyone said were funny and nobody could possibly like. Because Eskel looked cautiously happy, and in a shock of excitement, Geralt realized that Eskel looked like that because  _ he thought Geralt might like him back. _

Cavendro’s deep voice cut through the heart-pounding moment. “The next step is for you to kiss one another,” he declared. “What lucky boys you are, to get to do this for the first time with someone you love and trust.”

“Sir,” Eskel asked without quite asking, eyes turning away from Geralt to stare at Cavendro in confusion. The trainees had been given a lot of strange orders during their years in the Bastion, especially while being taught how to survive in the wilderness, but this…

“Kiss him,” Cavendro directed. “You’ve both thought about it. Eskel, you’ve thought about it so long some nights that you kept yourself from sleeping and woke up tired for training.”

Geralt couldn’t even begin to understand why Cavendro cared about any of this, but maybe he was just trying to be helpful. Maybe it was like that bit in that racy novel one of the older witchers had brought back--all the boys had taken turns reading it aloud to each other in the evenings, and there was a part where the heroine had refused to accept her lover’s proposal of marriage and everyone had been screaming at her to pull her head out of her ass and just say yes. Was Geralt being like the Countess DeLauncrey in that scene? He didn’t want to throw away happiness like she almost had. 

Then an even worse thought occurred to Geralt: what if this was the last opportunity either of them would have to kiss anyone before one or both of them died in the Trials?

“I’m losing patience,” Cavendro snapped.

Eskel was the brave one. With a last glance at Cavendro, he scooted close to Geralt, leaned forward to get around Geralt’s shoulder, and pressed their mouths together. 

Eskel’s lips were very soft and a little wet and if it had been anything but Eskel’s mouth, Geralt would have thought it was kind of gross. Beyond the softness and wetness and the fact that it was Eskel and Geralt liked Eskel very much, it didn’t feel like anything. In books, kisses were described like electricity and fire, like the touching of two souls, and also as the first step before people fucked--and this wasn’t bad but it certainly wasn’t all that. 

Cavendro laughed, a low chuckle of amusement. “Ah well, Eskel liked it at least. Perhaps you’re a little too young still for kissing to have much appeal. That’s all right, we can skip over that bit to the real point: get out of your clothes, I’d like to see the two of you stroke each other off.”

“Sir,” Eskel protested, anger and dismay clear in his voice. “We can’t--we shouldn’t--!”

The mage stood. He crossed to the two of them, bending down to brace his hands on his thighs. Even bent over, they could see that his cock was hard, pushing up against the inside of his robes. Geralt couldn’t help but stare at it--the erection, like the rest of the mage, was intimidatingly huge. 

“Oh, sweet child, how would you know what is best for you?” Cavendro said to Eskel. “Remember who it is who mixes the ingredients for your Trials. I’ll acknowledge that you  _ can _ say no to me, if you wish. But if you do, who’s to say I won’t do something to your mutagens?” He nodded his head at Geralt. “Or to his? No one would think it the least bit strange if one or both of you didn’t survive. So many boys don’t, after all. Would you like to be among them?”

The question was delivered in an amiable tone, as if Cavendro were asking what Eskel might like for dinner. Eskel’s cheeks went bright red, and what looked suspiciously like the glittering dampness of tears came into his eyes as Cavendro talked. But Eskel viciously blinked them away just as fast, gaze dropping and hands balling into fists at his sides. 

Geralt, meanwhile, half thought he’d misunderstood somehow, and that the mage couldn’t  _ possibly _ be saying what Geralt thought. He stood there, heart pounding so hard he felt like his whole body was swaying with it, and tried to reason with himself about what other meaning Cavendro’s words could have. 

But the other half of Geralt knew that adults weren’t trustworthy. The trainees were often beaten just because one of the adults was in a bad mood. Three boys in their year had almost frozen to death when one of the trainers had locked them outside the Bastion last fall, ostensibly to teach them to cope with inclement weather. But everyone had known it was because the man had overheard the boys making fun of his limp. 

“Come now,” Cavendro cajoled after several seconds of silence, his long, serious face softening into a jovial smile. “I’m not asking for anything awful, not like the men who teach you combat. I’m doing you two a favor--you might die on the tables soon, and you don’t really really want to go to the grave without knowing what it’s like to be touched, do you?”

Eskel’s brown eyes dropped and he looked away. “No sir,” he mumbled. 

Geralt pressed their shoulders together. His hand sought Eskel’s and squeezed. Maybe he really did love Eskel. If a mage looked into your mind and said you loved your best friend, what else could it be?

And Cavendro was right, wasn’t he? This wasn’t a bad thing. Eskel was wonderful. He never participated in pranks against Geralt, never stole Geralt’s things, only teased Geralt in ways Geralt didn’t mind very much, and he ate with Geralt every meal and even saved tasty morsels for Geralt sometimes. Just last week they’d drawn little cartoon dragons for each other, and though Geralt wouldn’t have told anyone, he’d folded up every one of Eskel’s drawings and put them somewhere secret to keep. He thought Eskel was a good artist even if Eskel didn’t agree and could only point out all his own anatomy errors. 

So this time Geralt leaned around to kiss Eskel, and while he did it, he unbuttoned Eskel’s breeches and untucked his shirt. The soft warmth of Eskel’s belly was familiar from the nights they huddled into bed together during fall and winter and early spring, when both of them shrieked and squirmed to get away from each other’s icy fingers as they both tried to press them into each other’s warm bits. 

Geralt’s hands weren’t cold now. They were sweaty, sticking to the sides of Eskel’s hips as though they might glue themselves to Eskel’s skin if Geralt stopped moving, and leave them trapped together somehow. 

“Good lad,” the mage encouraged, turning around and seating himself again. “Now the rest of your clothes, both of you.”

Well, they’d been naked in front of lots of instructors for all sorts of reasons, hadn’t they? And this wasn’t nearly so bad as having to drop trousers to get beaten. Nobody was touching Geralt but Eskel. 

Unsure what to do with their mouths, Geralt just kept them pressed to one another as he tugged at their clothes. When they had to separate to get the shirts off and step out of their breeches, Geralt quickly moved in afterwards to come close again. Probably there was more to kissing than this, he thought, because it still didn’t feel like much, but it still wasn’t bad either. Eskel’s breath still smelled like rosemary from the bread at the end of their midday meal, and his mouth was still lovely and soft. Wouldn’t it feel nice to have a mouth that soft elsewhere on Geralt’s body? Geralt had heard about that in books and caught two of the older trainees doing it in an abandoned room in the east wing. 

Soon enough they were naked, and all their bare skin pressing together felt  _ amazing. _ Eskel was just so great in every way. Cavendro was right, anyone would wish to be so lucky as to have something like this happen to them. 

Eskel must have liked it too because he was already stiff against Geralt’s hip. That sent a thrill through Geralt, and  _ that _ was like how people described kisses in books--like a shiver of something bright and wild surging through Geralt.  _ He _ had done that to Eskel! Something about Geralt himself had made Eskel respond that way!

One of Eskel’s hands found its way between them and stroked over Geralt’s pubic mound, touching the new dark hairs there, exploring them just as Geralt had thought Eskel wanted to do earlier in the week. That was exciting too--that Eskel had wanted something and was now getting it. 

Cavendro offered no further input. He allowed them to fumble their way through it, gaze searing into them both like a brand. Geralt never managed to quite forget that the mage was there, and it was a little nerve-wracking, but it wasn’t so bad. 

Geralt had touched himself a few times. He’d seen one of the older boys doing it last winter, but had waited until a few months ago to try for himself. The first time Geralt had ever made himself come, it had felt like making the biggest discovery of all time--how could anyone get anything done while knowing that all they needed was a little rubbing and they could feel like  _ that? _ Geralt had, of course, run to tell Eskel all about it. A week later, Eskel had admitted that he’d tried it too. They had never done it in the same bed together--that had seemed like a step past what they were ready for yet--but now all of Geralt’s hesitance seemed so silly. 

Eskel’s cock was a little smaller than Geralt’s when erect, and it was a much lighter pink color. But it was still pert and firm and wonderfully warm against Geralt’s when he pressed them close. 

It was easy to rock their hips together that way. Easy and wonderful. Geralt shivered into it and then couldn’t stop shaking, so Eskel wrapped his arms around Geralt’s shoulders and held them close to one another. Geralt came that way with their faces tucked together, the air between them humid like their midwinter nights spent under the heaped furs and blankets. Eskel followed soon after. 

From where he sat at the desk, Cavendro let out a luxuriant sigh. Geralt didn’t want to look at him. Something about the idea of seeing the mage right now was just too much. 

“Mm, that was lovely, thank you,” Cavendro praised. “There’s something so piquant about a first time, isn’t there? Everything is so new and zingy. Pity it wasn’t your first climax ever. Maybe in a few weeks, after I complete the Trials, I’ll go find one of the younger ones and see what they can provide.” Rising from his chair, the mage pulled a kerchief out of his pocket and tossed it at Eskel, who caught it. “Now clean yourselves up and get out. I have a lot of work to do preparing for your Trials next week.”

**

The Trials arrived all too soon. Geralt and Eskel and all the others were strapped to the racks, the big hollow needles were spiked into their veins, and then Geralt thankfully didn’t remember much of what happened after that. 

But both Geralt and Eskel survived, and Geralt couldn’t help but think that this meant something. Perhaps, Geralt thought hopefully, it meant that Destiny wanted them to be together. The thought that Geralt had a lover destined just for him was terribly exciting. 

In Geralt’s less optimistic moments, however, he couldn’t help but wonder: what if Cavendro had done something special to their mutagens to make sure they survived? What if  _ all _ the boys could have survived if only Cavendro had decided to make it so? 

But no. That simply could not be the case. Surely not.

**

Two years later, as Geralt watched another batch of boys file out of the dormitory first thing in the morning to be put through the Trial of the Grasses, he came to a grim realization that he’d been avoiding for over a year now. 

Witchers were unable to love. 

It seemed so obvious, now, and his attempts to deny it seemed so ridiculous. Childish, even. He was two years into real witcher training, two years out of the Bastion and past the Trials. Two years into having the mutated body of a witcher, a year and a half into having white hair and reflexes even quicker than his peers. Last year he’d been terrified for the boys going into the Trials, miserable with the memory of his friends who’d died the year before. But now he didn’t feel anything. Some days, he felt like he was outside of his own body, moving it like a puppet. Once or twice, he had become so numb that he lost time and seemed to wake up later, after he’d finished being beaten or forced to run the trails again as punishment. 

It had started happening whenever Eskel touched him in a way that felt sexual, too. The world went kind of sideways, or narrowed in some way, and Geralt just felt cold and dead rather than getting excited as one was meant to do when touched by a lover. Clearly the mutagens were having some sort of cumulative effect on him that had not been evident at first--and the mutagens were not reversible. So that meant Geralt couldn’t love anyone now, or ever again. Whatever he might have felt for Eskel had been burned out of him. 

He felt a kind of dim regret when he thought about it. Cavendro would be disappointed--Geralt had seen the mage looking at him today as the mage had led away the children--but Cavendro could hardly blame Geralt for responding so well to the mutagens. 

Despite his lack of responsiveness, Geralt still cared a great deal for Eskel. Which meant that Geralt had to find some way to break the news to him. If Geralt couldn’t be passionate, he could at least be honorable--like the chivalrous knights in Geralt’s favorite stories. 

So Geralt pulled Eskel aside after dinner that night, bringing him to the empty dormitories in the east wing. The boys who normally lived in them were in the Trials right now, so they’d have the space all to themselves. Geralt could, if he focused, just hear the screaming. 

“What’s on your mind?” Eskel asked, sidling up close to Geralt where he was staring off into space, listening to a particularly high-pitched wail. Geralt wondered if that was the little sweet-faced boy who had only last year been brought to the keep--he was younger than was usual for the Trials, only just turned eight. 

“We can’t be together anymore,” Geralt blurted. “As lovers.”

Eskel stared at him for what felt like a very long time. Finally a little wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. 

“We can’t?” he asked, seeming puzzled. 

“We’re witchers,” Geralt explained, frustrated that it wasn’t obvious. “We can’t love each other, not like humans do. All we’re capable of is fucking. It’s foolish for us to delude ourselves into thinking that we’re capable of more.”

The wrinkle between Eskel’s dark eyebrows turned into a scowl. “I think that’s bullshit,” he barked. “Have you been reading those awful tracts, the Monstrum ones? Vesemir says they’re dangerous propaganda.”

Geralt only shrugged. He had read them, yes, because the older witchers had left them at the dinner table and Geralt read anything he could get his hands on. But this wasn’t about that. 

“I can’t love you,” Geralt said finally. He wished he knew how to couch the sentiment in more flowery language, to make it clear that it was meant as an expression of his deep consideration for Eskel. But he didn’t know how. “I’m not capable of it.”

“Oh,” Eskel said in a very small voice, and he seemed to shrink in some way. 

A sharp, terrifying feeling surged through Geralt at that sight but it went away just as fast.  _ All _ feeling went away, in fact. 

He blinked and an hour had passed and they were each in their own beds with the lights out. Geralt wondered what he’d said to Eskel. He hoped he’d made it clear that there was nothing wrong with Eskel himself. 


	2. Winter

The biting wind whipped through their clothes, an icy touch that found its way to their skin through every fold and buttonhole. But they had long since grown used to it, and they patrolled the battlements together in companionable silence. 

Or at least, Geralt thought it was companionable silence until Eskel started rubbing at his scars like he did when he was anxious. When Geralt cast an inquisitive glance at him, Eskel sighed. 

“You remember everything now?” Eskel asked carefully. “Everything?”

Clearly Eskel was getting at something, but Geralt couldn’t think what. They finished their circuit and descended back into the courtyard.

“So far as I know, yeah, I’ve got it all back,” Geralt said. “Every blasted thing. A lot of it, I was better off without.”

For some reason, this made Eskel heave a sigh. He ran a hand over his face again, rubbing at his scar, then looked briefly skyward before closing his eyes. 

“Then--then I've got something to say to you,” Eskel said, grimacing. “Will you sit for a minute to hear it?”

Raising his eyebrows, wondering what on earth he had to be seated to hear, Geralt ostentatiously seated himself against one of the walls. He folded his hands in his lap. 

Eskel’s hand ran up and down the right side of his face and he didn’t sit down. He looked upset, almost nauseated. 

“Look, Geralt I...first you were dead,” Eskel started, and Geralt could tell this wasn’t what Eskel had wanted to say. “You were dead, and I figured it was too late for me to say anything. That was...awful. Then you _weren’t_ dead, but you remembered nothing, not even me,” Eskel continued. He paced back and forth in front of Geralt. “But I promised myself: if you remembered someday, I’d tell you. I’d finally just fucking say it. No more being a coward.”

Eyebrows creeping higher still, Geralt watched this display of anxiety. _Was_ there some significant memory he still hadn’t gotten back? Maybe he’d done some awful thing Eskel was still angry about? 

Stopping in his tracks, Eskell took a deep breath, and then another, clearly using their meditative skills to calm himself. After a moment, he said in a more even voice, “I’m in love with you, Geralt.”

Geralt stared. The start of several possible replies formed and then died on his tongue, leaving him just blinking up at the other witcher. 

“What?” he finally croaked. 

“I’m in love with you,” Eskel sighed, as if admitting to some deep and terrible fault. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you don’t want that. Maybe you even hate it. But...but you’re alive and I’m alive, and we might not be that way for much longer if we’re going up against the Wild Hunt. So I just want to say it to you, finally, while we’re both of sound mind.”

“You’re in love with me?” Geralt repeated, disbelieving even though this clearly wasn’t a prank. _Lambert_ would do something like this as a joke, but not Eskel. He wasn’t cruel in that way. 

“Yeah.” With a hangdog look, Eskel seemed to deflate, sagging to the ground at last. He lumped down against the wall a little ways along from Geralt so they wouldn’t touch anywhere. His big, scarred hands dropped into his lap and rubbed back and forth against each other. Picking absently at his nails, he went on, “I probably have been my whole life. There’s never been a time I didn’t just want to be by your side, loving you. Regardless of...everything that’s happened.”

Something in this at last shook words loose in Geralt’s skull. 

“You can’t love me,” he protested. 

“Think I’m old enough to know what I’m feeling,” Eskel disagreed. “Almost a hundred now, and you being dead and gone for a couple years did wonders for clearing away all the bullshit in my mind. That really...really made me realize exactly how true it was.”

“But it’s not--that’s not real,” Geralt protested. He wasn’t sure why, but what Eskel was saying simply couldn’t be true. 

_“You_ decided that, not me,” Eskel said, sounding tired. “I went along with it because I was too young to know how to argue with you about it and too scared you’d stop being friends with me if I pushed. But as monstrous as that mage was, he was right about one thing: that I love you.”

At this Geralt scoffed. “Cavendro didn’t do anything. He didn’t even touch us.”

Eskel’s head rotated and he fixed Geralt with a stare. Geralt scowled back. 

“Didn’t do anything, huh? Do you even hear yourself?” Eskel bit out. “So if he’d done that exact thing to Ciri--taken her and some other little girl and wanted to see them touch each other while he read their minds to feel what they were feeling--that would have been fine with you?” 

For a few seconds the words didn’t really register. Then Geralt actually heard them and had to stop to imagine what Eskel was saying. 

If anyone had wanted to do that to Ciri even _now_ , now that she was a full adult more than capable of defending herself, Geralt would want to kill them. And at the age they had been...it had happened just before their Trial of the Grasses, meaning they’d been ten years old. At that age Ciri had only come up to the middle of Geralt’s chest. The very thought made Geralt’s belly roil with disgust and fury. 

Even despite that, Geralt still felt a very familiar resistance in himself to what Eskel was saying. He and Eskel (and Lambert and Vesemir and Triss and Yen) had all been forced to have conversations like this many, many times over the course of the years Ciri had spent at Kaer Morhen. So many things that had seemed acceptable for _them_ as children had suddenly become horrifying when anyone had proposed doing them to Ciri. Ciri’s small, vulnerable body had put an astonishing number of things into stark perspective. 

But every time it was like Geralt had to drag his mind through sludge. A hundred excuses went through Geralt’s head as he sat there in the chilly sun of late fall, just as they had so many times before. 

_But Cavendro didn’t even touch us. But Yen reads my mind like that all the time. But it didn’t hurt. But we both survived the Trial of the Grasses so maybe he even helped us._

“No,” Geralt finally admitted. Now it was his turn to rub at his face, scratching at his beard and pushing his hair out of his eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Yeah, of course not,” Eskel echoed at him. 

“So you, uh, love me?” Geralt said, feeling sick and exhausted suddenly. This, too, was familiar--first came the shock of realization, then came a kind of heavy misery. “What do you want with me?”

“Well,” Eskel winced. “Maybe start with the basics. Do you think you could love me back, someday? If we survive the Hunt?”

Geralt let himself think it over, but really there wasn’t much to think about. It was Eskel. Of _course_ he loved Eskel. He hadn’t thought about him in this way in a long, long time--not since eleven or twelve, or however old he’d been when he...

Finishing that thought was like wading through chest-deep swamp muck. The mental effort it took was incredible, his internal monologue desperately trying to veer away from it and toward anything else. Geralt forced through it anyway. 

He hadn’t thought about Eskel as any kind of lover since eleven or twelve. That was so young--too young to even understand what love meant, really, much less decide he would never be able to feel it. After his decades with Dandelion and Yen, and his hopes for Regis even though they came to nothing, and his feelings for Triss, however manufactured they had been--after all that, the idea that Geralt couldn’t love seemed especially ridiculous. 

Which meant that Geralt had sabotaged what could have been something beautiful between himself and Eskel for _three-quarters of a century._

The sudden awareness of the yawning span of that loss took his breath away. 

“Oh,” he said again, and brought his knees up to his chest. He felt very small and wanted to curl into a ball to protect himself even though there was no one in the courtyard to hurt them. “I ruined everything, didn’t I.”

“No, Cavendro and all the older Witchers did that,” Eskel said, sounding every bit as exhausted. “Still haven’t answered my question, though.”

“Yeah,” Geralt croaked. He cleared his throat, swallowing. “Yeah, of course I could love you back. You’ve been my best friend my whole life.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” Eskel insisted. “Being my friend doesn’t mean you love me like that.” He sighed, then. “Please, Geralt. Really think it through, don’t just say yes. I know we’re both witchers, so I know how easy it is to think you’re in love with anyone who looks at you with anything more than disgust. But I don’t want that from you. I want something real.”

For a moment Geralt felt furious with Eskel for saying it, but the feeling subsided just as fast. Geralt knew Eskel was right. It was just that the undoing of his wish with Yennefer had left a void in his life he was desperate to fill. He had built his identity for the last decades around two things: being Yennefer’s lover and Ciri’s father. His life was still constructed around parenting Ciri, given that he’d spent months now trying to find Ciri and might still die protecting her from the Wild Hunt. But to lose Yen...

“We don’t have time for me to think it over,” Geralt protested. “We’re preparing to fight the damned Wild Hunt. We could both die. I don’t want to go to the grave with unfinished business--again. Already done it once.”

But Eskel shook his head. “Well, _I_ don’t want you to start something with me and then tell me later that it was a mistake--again. I don’t think I could take that a second time.”

Something in Geralt resisted this. Now that Eskel had brought this monumental thing to his attention, Geralt didn’t want to wait, he wanted to get it over with. He didn’t want this hanging over his head. Wouldn’t it be better, he thought, if they just fucked now and started whatever would take shape between them? If they died, wouldn’t it be better that they had some resolution to the overwhelming concept that they could have been in love and together this whole time?

But Eskel had done that, hadn’t he. He had asked his question and gotten his answer. And the idea that feeling anything for Eskel had to immediately result in sex sounded altogether too familiar, now Geralt was thinking about it. 

Besides, he had fucked a lot of people over the years. In retrospect, he would have been better off with just his own hand than having had most of those experiences. He did not want to feel that way about Eskel too. 

“That’s fair,” Geralt shakily admitted. “It’s just--I didn’t think of this for so long that I feel like I owe you something.”

Eskel only shook his head. “That right there--that’s why I want you to think it over and make sure this is something you want.” He let out a rueful snort, lifting a hand to rub at his scars again. “Always a lot to regret in the life of a witcher, but I can’t bear to be one of those things for you. Now come on. Let’s get out of the cold.”

Rising from his seat, Eskel held his hand out to Geralt. Geralt took it and they went inside. 

**

Over the next few days, as allies arrived at Kaer Morhen and the witchers there prepared themselves for a battle, Geralt found his mind dragged continually back to Eskel like iron filings to a magnet. 

In some moments, the thoughts made Geralt clammy and miserable--what if their friendship would soon be ruined now that Eskel had made his declaration and Geralt had made his reply? Geralt’s wish with Yennefer had been forcibly broken, so who did he have anymore? Regis was dead, Dandelion at last seemed to have expended his interest in Geralt even though they were still friends, and Triss...well Geralt didn’t know what to do with Triss. 

In Geralt’s relationships with others, no matter how wrong they went, Geralt had at least known that he could eventually return to Kaer Morhen and tell Eskel about it, and that when he did, Eskel would understand and be on his side. The idea that Geralt might manage to fuck up this relationship too made Geralt feel sick. He had to swallow repeatedly to keep down the contents of his stomach and his heart beat almost human-fast in his chest. Sleep proved even more elusive than before.

Geralt wanted to be loved, of course, but did he want it even if it came at the expense of the oldest and deepest friendship in his life? It was all too easy to imagine how quickly Eskel would realize what an empty and disappointing prize Geralt was. The possibility of Eskel’s mouth curling down in disgust when he looked at Geralt was so clear in Geralt’s mind that Geralt felt as though he were seeing it in truth all the time. 

And over all these petty, childish thoughts of love loomed the impending doom of the Wild Hunt. Geralt knew Eredin and his men: huge, brutal fighters whose mere presence could freeze most men solid. Wouldn’t it be better for both of them to never know what the grief of losing each other as a lover would be like? Maybe Geralt had been protecting himself all this time by refusing to allow himself to think of Eskel that way. 

But then came the unavoidable knowledge that Geralt had already put Eskel through that. Twice, in a way; once at twelve, when Geralt had so completely severed the connection between them, and once three years ago when he had ‘died’. How could Eskel possibly think it worthwhile to take the chance of going through either of those experiences _again?_ He deserved so much better than that. 

Yet Geralt, like all witchers, was skilled at knowing that his life was in danger and continuing to function regardless. So despite the nightmare that hung over them all, both his body and his thoughts kept right on moving. 

Which meant that in some moments, Geralt’s blood ran hot and his cock stiffened in his breeches at the sight of Eskel’s battered knuckles, thick thighs, and notched lips. When they had been together as children, the two of them had done all sorts of things with one another, but they’d never really fucked. They’d tried once, with spit and Eskel taking it slow, but it had felt bad for both of them so they’d stopped. At that age, they hadn’t had access to the high-grade slick the older witchers made for themselves. They could have stolen some, but that risked being caught and beaten, and there were other things to do so they hadn’t felt the lack. 

So now--now that both of them had more than eighty years of experience with sex--Geralt could anticipate how good it would be to sleep with Eskel. Eskel had matured from a willowy child to a heavy-set man with a cock to match. Eskel’s endowment was so beautiful and his skill in using it so great that even Lambert openly sang Eskel’s praises, and given what a sour-mouthed complainer Lambert was, that meant something. 

Which, now that Geralt thought about it, had always made him jealous. Perhaps that should have given him a clue that something was going on, but he’d figured it was because he himself wanted amorous company and Lambert had already taken himself elsewhere. It seemed ridiculous, now, that Geralt had fucked Lambert for so many years without ever wondering why he never fucked Eskel again too. It had been, in his mind, simply impossible--that bridge had burned and he could no more lay with Eskel again than either of them could turn back time.

Geralt here and now, however, was keenly aware that Eskel was an extremely proficient lover whose tastes complemented Geralt’s well, and who had already been made to wait far too long to have Geralt. Add to that the fact that Eskel seemed to still love Geralt for some reason, and...well. The prospect was enough to make Geralt’s palms sweat and his blood run hot despite the weather. 

But Geralt’s feelings on the subject were capricious. No sooner would he start to allow himself to really picture what he and Eskel might do together than the image of Eskel’s body dead and mangled by the Wild Hunt would loom into Geralt’s mind. Then the lusty images would shrivel into nothingness and leave only the empty horror that Geralt still felt when he thought of Regis and Renfri and the others who had died because of him. Death and misery followed in his wake like knights after their king. Didn’t he know that by now?

One night, when Geralt and Eskel stretched their legs and tried to warm up in the chilly keep by climbing the stairs to the top of the west tower. During the climb, in which both of them pretended they weren’t out of breath by trying to keep their breathing audibly steady, Geralt tried to express some of this confusing mishmash of thoughts to Eskel. 

“You deserved so much better than this!” Geralt burst out. “All these years I made you wait for no reason. It’s monstrous.”

At this, Eskel stopped so fast that Geralt almost ran into him, turning to stare down at Geralt from the next step up. 

“No,” Eskel said. “Don’t make me into another mental whipping post. I didn’t ask you to feel sorry for me, and I don’t want you turning this into another reason to hate yourself.”

“That’s not--” Geralt started to deny, and then realized how foolish that would be. “I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s just hard not to. I just...”

This far into the climb, Geralt felt too warm in his clothes. He shucked off his heavy cloak, folding it over his arm and then tapping his fingertips on the frigid metal railings. 

“I wanted better for you,” Geralt admitted at last. “For decades now I’ve worried about how much those scars and--” Geralt knew better than to say Diedre’s name, but he fumbled for how to avoid it. “--the circumstances around them messed you up. You haven’t been the same since.” Eskels’s face tightened, nearly turning into the look of disgust that had filled Geralt’s anxious thoughts for days. 

“I know how that feels!” Geralt bit out, worried by that expression. “I know you hate those scars, and I get it. When it happened to you, I thought, gods no, this is your Blaviken. It took me more than twenty years and two lovers after that to even _start_ to think maybe I was allowed to move on from that. Shit, I still struggle to think that...” He swallowed. Even now it felt shameful to admit. “That it doesn’t help for me to punish myself about it forever.”

Eskel’s eyes closed. The bump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. Geralt waited for him to say something but he didn’t. 

“I know you’ve fucked a few people over the years but you haven’t even had serious lovers like I did,” Geralt finally went on. “Yennefer and Dandelion were what made me believe there might still be anything good about me. And y’know, for a while there when I had no memories, I forgot I _had_ anything to be ashamed of, so I really just let Triss love me. That felt...” Geralt shook himself. It wasn’t relevant right now. “Point is, every time I fell into self-loathing, I had lovers showing me how much they wanted me despite that. I’ve tried to support you in my own way, but it hasn’t been enough, has it?”

For an agonizingly long time Eskel just stood with his eyes shut. One of his hands opened and closed, the leather of his fingerless gloves creaking. Geralt wanted to take that hand and put it on his face, his neck, to warm it up those fingertips with his body heat like they’d done when they were little. 

“You always did like to pretend everything is about you,” Eskel said at last, and Geralt scowled at him, discomfited by this unexpected answer. Blinking at last, Eskel saw the grumpy expression on Geralt’s face and let out a low chuckle. “Part of me wants to agree with you. It’d be easier on me to just say this is all your fault, and to dream about how much better my life would have been if you’d wanted me at any point in all these years. But you’re not the only person here making decisions, and I’m the one who fucked things up so bad that I wound up with a face like this. That was me, not you.” 

With that he turned away, continuing up the stairs so Geralt had no choice but to follow or be left behind. 

“You made me wait, yeah,” Eskel went on, “but I made myself wait too. And that’s on me. I could have brought it up any time during all these decades and I didn’t.”

Upon hearing this, Geralt grabbed Eskel’s hand. He was careful not to pull too hard, because these stairs were dangerous, and it was all too easy to imagine tumbling down them to their deaths. But Geralt gripped just hard enough enough to force Eskel to stop. 

“So why wait anymore?” Geralt demanded when Eskel turned to look at him again. “What’s stopping us from going downstairs right now and making up for lost time?” He gave a suggestive smile, lifting his eyebrows at Eskel. “I’ll let you do anything you want.”

But this only made Eskel flinch, expression miserable. 

“You don’t say ‘I love you’ with your ass, Geralt,” Eskel murmured, low and unhappy. “If I wanted to get my dick wet, I’d just spit in my hand. Do you still not understand that this is about more than that?”

“Of course I do!” Geralt snapped. “I’m trying right now to show you how much I care about you!”

“No,” Eskel denied. “You’re telling me that you feel guilty for hurting me, that you’re taking false responsibility for issues that are mine because you think everything is your fault, and that you want to fuck me. Those things aren’t the same.”

For a moment Geralt was furious. He felt even hotter inside his layers, heat crawling up his neck and face. His grip on both the iron railing and Eskel’s hand flexed tighter, the railing cutting into his palm. He wanted to deny it, to say ‘how dare you’ or ‘why are you making this so difficult,’ but...

But a moment later the anger subsided into a rueful laugh. 

“You see right through me,” Geralt admitted. 

Yet even at this Eskel only looked sad. “No, I don’t. I waited so many decades because I couldn’t predict what you’d do if I confessed my feelings.”

At that, Geralt looked into Eskel’s eyes. Geralt felt simultaneously more unsettled and yet calmer than he had been before he’d started this conversation. All his fantasies and imaginings about Eskel still terrified him, but the _real_ Eskel, here in front of him, was someone he knew well. Someone who was just as damaged and confused and scared as Geralt himself, just like the other people Geralt had loved.

The eye-contact became suddenly overwhelming. To give himself space to think, Geralt looked at the stairs, at the groove worn into the center of the stone steps from centuries of feet upon them. It made them slippery and treacherous.

“You told me you couldn’t love me,” Eskel went on. “You slept with damn near every witcher _but_ me for decades. If you hadn’t died and then come back, I doubt I’d ever have said anything. But death has a way of revealing what had been shrouded and secret before.”

At this Geralt risked another look at Eskel’s face--he had to know what Eskel was thinking. 

The naked longing Geralt saw there left him breathless, the muscles along his ribs gripping so tight they hurt. As though compelled by a force outside himself, Geralt moved carefully up another step, bringing their faces close. 

Eskel’s eyes tracked every movement as Geralt’s face neared his, flickering over Geralt’s mouth and eyes and then down to Geralt’s hand where it still held his. 

When their lips finally touched, the _déja vu_ was overpowering. Eskel’s lips were very soft and a little wet--but this time rather than being summer-warm, they were cool to the touch as they lost heat in the winter chill. The biting cold of the abandoned tower was so different from that first kiss in the lab all those years ago. 

At ten, Eskel’s mouth had been untouched by stubble or scars. Now, the rasp of evening beard prickled against Geralt’s bottom lip, and when he licked over that mouth to warm it with his tongue, the tip fit perfectly into the hollow left by the scar. 

A shocked sigh escaped Eskel. His hand lifted to cup Geralt’s face, thumb stroking over Geralt’s own scarred cheekbone, and it was as though that touch had found every one of Geralt’s nerves at once. Gooseflesh awoke on all his limbs and ran up his nape until he shivered into Eskel’s mouth. 

When they parted some unknowable amount of time later, Geralt stood swaying with his eyes closed. He’d had blows to the head that had left him less wobbly than this. 

“Fuck,” Eskel whispered. “We--we have to stop.”

“Why?” Geralt asked, raising his hand to Eskel’s scarred cheek and stroking curious fingertips over the dips and ridges. He felt the trembling that passed through Eskel at the touch. 

“Because I don’t want to just fuck you,” Eskel replied. “I don’t want this to turn out like when we were young.”

“So we won’t fuck,” Geralt said, to his own surprise. “This alone is wonderful. Just kissing.” 

A thought occurred to him then, somehow shaped by the feeling of Eskel’s scars under his thumb. 

“First I convinced myself that I couldn’t love you because I was a witcher,” Geralt said, and a kind of warm shock overtook him as the idea unspooled inside him. “And then when you said you loved me, I told you it was fake and just something Cavendro made up about us. But now I’m here with you, I can feel how real it is.” He laughed a little, delighted. “You and I could have something just like in the stories. All the shivers and passion and everything--that’s us, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Eskel asked, the words small and vulnerable despite the deep resonance of his barrel chest. 

“Yeah,” Geralt said, and leaned his forehead against Eskel’s jaw. 

“How long will that last?” Eskel asked, despairing. “We’re both too old to believe in fairy tales.”

Hearing Eskel so defeated and unhappy made something click at last in Geralt’s mind. He could feel the warmth of Eskel’s breath and smell the remnants of the meal they’d eaten together. There was something wildly intimate about that fact. 

“You’re right, we’re too old to believe the story ends when the lovers kiss,” Geralt said then. “I hear what you’re saying. Love is--it's not just getting off together and having big feelings. Love that isn’t just a story in a book is something you _build_ together. It’s what happens when you’re so committed that when you fuck up, you apologize and try to do better, and you come back to each other despite being angry or hurt or scared. And we--we already do that! We’ve done that the whole time. We’re doing that right now.”

Geralt felt...big, saying it. When he thought of it that way, he stopped feeling so small and scared. 

“That’s how I love you, Eskel,” Geralt said with calm confidence this time. “Is that what you want to hear?”

Eskel wrapped his arms around Geralt’s shoulders, holding him close. 

“Yeah,” he said shakily. “Yeah. If either of us dies...I think I could be at peace.”

With a nod, Geralt tucked his face into the warm space below Eskel’s ear and just inside the hood of his cloak. Geralt didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but he felt more able to face it knowing they had this.

For a while they just stood. They swayed gently as their bodies shifted, one of Geralt's hand still on the railing to keep them steady. Then at last they went back down to the keep. 


End file.
